Copyright defined: Copyright is a property right to materials written and produced by authors. What happens if you violate copyright? You can be sued! Depending upon what you do, you can even be charged with a crime. At the very least, you could get in trouble with the school and your teachers. It is important for you to know what you can and can not do with materials that you did not create.

These are some of the things you CAN and CAN NOT do: • You may make a single photocopy of any material you need to complete your schoolwork, or for your own personal research. You may keep the copies you make as long as you like, but you may not sell them. • You must respect the copyright of materials you use. You may not modify or change the material nor may you perform or display the material except in conjunction with class work. • You may use copyrighted material to do your schoolwork, but you must give the author credit either in the text or in a footnote. Your teachers will show you how to create a works cited/ bibliography page and how to use parenthetical documentation in a paper. If you use an author’s works, you must put the words in quotation marks. Failure to give credit to the author is plagiarism. • Use of copyrighted materials outside of regular class work requires written permission of the copyright holder. This includes graphic material such as cartoon characters on posters or other sprit or decorative matter. • You may not copy computer software from the school computers. • Information received from the school computers may be used only for regular schoolwork or personal research.